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The Profiled Author

28 February 2020 by 2 Comments

The Profiled Author is part of ‘Let’s Talk with the Authors’, a series of interviews with authors who have worked with editors4you or WriteDesign Publications. The promotional opportunity is also open to other authors (contact us for details).

The Profiled Author: Greg Kater

Promoting Your Books

Around Christmas 2019, I offered my authors a simple way to promote their books through an author interview.

As we writers know, it’s one thing to write a book. It’s quite another to promote it. Writers tend to shy away from promotion, but it’s vital to kick the shyness habit and get our books out there in the big wide world.

In this third interview in the series, the profiled author is Greg Kater, a prolific author who has so far published four novels: The Warramunga’s War, The Warramunga’s Aftermath of War, Skills of the Warramunga and Conflict on the Yangtze. And he hasn’t finished writing yet!

Today, we chat with Greg about his four books. Meet Greg on his website.

the profiled author greg kater
Greg Kater author of the Warramunga series and Conflict on the Yangtze

Tell us how you started writing

I am an 80-year-old Australian living on the Gold Coast of Queensland. I retired as a geological and geophysical consultant to the resources industries five years ago. During my professional life, I was always busy and never had time for writing anything but thousands of technical reports.

On my retirement, I had time on my hands and decided that I would like to write fiction using my knowledge of different lands and peoples. I had worked with many weird and wonderful people and thought it would be fun to include them (under different names) in my novels.

That’s an interesting point, because your characters are vividly painted, likeable (the goodies!) and realistic. Did you tell these people they were going to appear in your books? How did they react?

No, I didn’t tell anyone in advance that I might base my characters on them. At first, I didn’t know which characters I was likely to develop as the story progressed, but each situation brought forth a new memory. Most of the characters I remembered are diverse and spread out all over the place. Some may not now be alive. Contemporaries of mine who have recognised themselves in my novels have been most amused (and, I hope, pleased).

I was fascinated and completely drawn in by the descriptions of countries, locations, buildings and customs in your novels. How were you able to make them so vibrant?

I travelled extensively and worked in all parts of the world and in all sorts of environments, from Australian desert and remote bush country to parts of the USA, Central America, South East Asia, Russian Siberia, the Middle East and most provinces of China. The countries and locations in my books are all personally familiar to me.

Tell us about your books.

The profiled author’s first book

My first book, The Warramunga’s War, was initially based on my father’s war diaries and his involvement in the Syrian campaign and the desert war in the Middle East and North Africa during World War II. My principal characters were based on people I had worked with at Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, including some of the local aboriginal people, the Warramungas, during the 1960s. All the localities in the book are places where I have been and know well.

book cover for the profiled author the warramunga's war
The Profiled Author: Greg Kater’s The Warramunga’s War

Greg’s second book

My second book, The Warramunga’s Aftermath of War, which takes place in early 1946, deals with the trafficking of children from the war-torn Philippines. I lived in the Philippines for 11 years from 1969 as VP with one of the major mining companies there. I learned a great deal about the havoc and suffering during the Japanese occupation, as well as some of the terrible things that happened later as criminals took advantage of the chaos in the aftermath of war. I felt a need to write about this.

book cover greg kater
The Profiled Author: Greg Kater, The Warramunga’s Aftermath of War

The third book in the Warramunga trilogy

My third book, Skills of the Warramunga, takes place in Malaya, where I have also worked throughout the country. In the aftermath of World War II, many different groups, including communists, bandits, Nazis and others, were trying to gain control of all or part of the Malayan Peninsular from the British. The novel deals with the period when the British created the Malayan Union in April 1946. It showcases the extraordinary tracking skills of the Warramunga aborigines, which I witnessed first-hand during my time at Tennant Creek.

photo of book cover for the profiled author
The Profiled Author: Greg Kater, Skills of the Warramunga

The fourth book – Greg couldn’t let his characters go!

I had originally set out to write a trilogy using the same principal characters, but after the third novel I just couldn’t let them fade away! So, I wrote Conflict on the Yangtze. I have been to China more than a hundred times and am very familiar with the landscape and the people. In 1946, although Japanese occupation had ended, there was still a good deal of fighting throughout China between the government (the Kuomintang), the communists, warlords and various criminal groups, all trying to establish centres of power. Most of the leading families mentioned in the novel are real and there certainly was some opium smuggling going on at that time.

book cover for the profiled author
Greg Kater’s Conflict on the Yangtze

Your books clearly required a huge amount of painstaking research. How did you go about this?

In spite of my intimate knowledge of the localities and their histories, I had to undertake a great deal of research to confirm the accuracy of the historical events my fictional characters were involved in. I researched material from libraries, diaries and known histories as well as talking to people who had been around during the war in the different countries. As mentioned before, I was also able to use my father’s war experiences in my first novel.

Did you enjoy doing the research? Why?

Historical research is very fulfilling. I have always been interested in history and the research enabled me to learn much more about past events than I previously knew. That gathering of knowledge, in no small way, increased my enthusiasm for ensuring the accuracy of historical events.

What are the main themes in these four books?

Apart from a good amount of action, adventure and history, I have tried to include the themes of friendship, trust, humour and skills, mixed in with a certain amount of love and romance.

Who do you consider is your main audience?

I think my main audience comprises all ages, from 15 years up. With my style of historical fiction, I don’t believe it necessary to spice up the narrative with lurid descriptions of steamy sexual affairs or extreme violence. In wartime and its aftermath, violence does occur. When it does, I have generally moderated the descriptions as far as possible to appeal to a wider audience.

Many authors struggle with promotion. How have you gone about promoting your book, and what success have you met with?

Yes. As with all other authors, I struggle with promotion. I have been fortunate to have the support of the Online Book Club and other such organisations which have produced hundreds of maximum star reviews for my books and supported me in other ways. I have also been fortunate to have received several book awards from various international groups that run competitions. If any of that translates into book sales, we’ll have to see…

Greg, I believe you’re currently writing your next book. Can you give us a sneak peak, without giving too much away?

I am about 70% through another historical fiction novel which is set in a completely different period to that of my first four books. The working title is Scent of a Foreign Land. It follows the adventures of a family in the 1830s-40s who sail to Australia from England and carve out a life for themselves producing cattle and sheep in the vast wild country over the mountains west of Sydney.

The story is based on the detailed diaries and letters of my great-great-grandmother, as well as letters and histories of other ancestors. Writing this novel has been slow, as I am in possession of almost too much research material. However, it is a wondrous thing to be able to get into the minds of my forebears. They were a hardy lot. It is quite a series of adventures.

You can read reviews of and purchase Greg’s books by:

Going to Greg’s website and purchasing from one of the suppliers listed there.

In our next ‘Let’s Talk with the Authors’ series, we chat with another Gold Coast author who wrote a moving account of losing her son in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.

If you would like to be interviewed for this series as a featured author, please contact us.

Featured Authors

14 February 2020 by Leave a Comment

Featured Authors is part of the series of interviews ‘Let’s Talk with the Authors’. Featured authors have worked with editors4you or WriteDesign Publications. The promotional opportunity for featured authors is also open to other authors (contact us for details).

Featured Authors: M.B. Wynter

Promoting Your Books

As we writers know, it’s one thing to write a book. It’s quite another to promote it. Writers tend to shy away from promotion, but it’s vital to kick the shyness habit so that we can get our books out there in the big wide world.

In our second interview of featured authors, we chat with M.B. Wynter, an Australian author from Sydney. The Fetal Position is her first YA fiction novel.

featured authors photo of M.B. Wynter the fetal position
Featured Authors: M.B. Wynter, The Fetal Position

Can you give us an elevator pitch of your story?

The Fetal Position follows the lives of my two protagonists, Dwaine Hauser and Paige Wyander, a young couple from Sydney and Melbourne respectively who are at a crossroads. Personally, they are in distress, and their relationship has come to a standstill. Paige suffers from a disability that greatly affects her relationships and her ability to manage a seemingly easy life, while Dwaine is trying to graduate high school despite his father’s recent incarceration. The novel has both lovely as well as cringingly awkward moments, which to me is a young adult’s life in a nutshell.

The Fetal Position is YA fiction. Have you found that people other than young adults also purchase your book? What feedback have you had from such readers?

Surprisingly, yes, and the feedback is mostly the same. In both online reviews and in person, many say that the book is a little too graphic for their liking in terms of sexual content. My response to that has been, ‘This is what young people do.’ I didn’t write an erotic fiction novel, but I wrote one that doesn’t shy away from what happens behind doors in a young person’s life. Particularly when the book is centred around a couple who are very much in love.

Some other responses I’ve received have been nostalgic. I reference a lot of 70’s, 80’s and 90’s music, and I realise that most young adults wouldn’t be familiar with half of it, but it worked with readers over 25. I’m relieved because yes, The Fetal Position is YA fiction, but what writer wouldn’t want their work to appeal to everybody? 

I believe it took you a number of years to finish your book. You began at the age of 13 and published your book in 2018. What were some of the challenges you faced in writing and completing your book?

No one on earth will ever know the agony I went through to write and complete this book. I was 13 years old; I was in year 8, I was a top student living a healthy lifestyle and I was very happy. I initially wrote about 25,000 words of The Fetal Position (which didn’t have a title until a few weeks before I published it) but then life began to change for me on a personal level. I won’t delve into it but the next 10 years were a severe struggle and it affected every aspect of my life, including my writing.

I was stuck. I didn’t have writer’s block (I knew exactly where my characters were going) but I was a kid, I knew nothing about writing a novel and I knew no one who had written one. I’d read a hundred books and all I knew was that The Fetal Position had its place on paper.

Stephen King says there are really only two things you need to do in order to be a writer; you need to read a lot and you need to write a lot. I read that quote when I was a teenager in the midst of my struggles, and it made perfect sense to me. There are no excuses or shortcuts. I struggled in my youth, yes, but I never stopped doing those two things. The writing took up most of my high school education and a few years after, but by 2018 I’d finished the first draft and needed professional assistance.

You redrafted your novel many times, but your book has an intriguingly mature perspective and contains many mature insights. Did you feel particularly ‘mature’ when you began writing your book?

The funny thing is that as I grew up, so did the story. Paige is 21 and Dwaine is 18. I (the person who made them up in my head and gave them names and scars and secrets) was 13. I felt mature when I started writing it, and in many ways I was, but it didn’t take me long to realise I was coming up short in some areas. I would map out a crucial scene, but when it came to writing it, I couldn’t inject emotion into it because I hadn’t felt those emotions myself.

That’s why I had to redraft parts of The Fetal Position multiple times. By the time I published it at 23 years old, I felt everything I needed to feel in order to do my characters justice and not sell them to the world ‘half done’.

Young adults are sometimes faced with adult issues. You told me these shouldn’t be treated lightly. Can you give a couple of examples from your book?

Many children are faced with situations where they’re forced to grow up very quickly. I knew when I started writing it that the mature themes were going to cause some controversy. My mother hasn’t finished reading it because in the first chapter there’s a moment when Paige and Dwaine witness her mother having sex in the living room. I understand my mum’s reservations as well as everyone else’s, but society needs to remember that this scene is not far-fetched for some people. Some kids have to be the ones to look after their parents, just as Paige does with her drug-addicted mother. I wanted to be as authentic as possible when writing this story, I didn’t sugar-coat anything.

Paige suffers from an illness where she must be medicated, and medication has side-effects. In recent times, the world is learning that adolescents struggle with many ‘adult’ problems, including mental illness, and it was important to me to factor this in when writing scenes that to some would be controversial. In reality, there are millions of Paiges out there.

Your book is set in 1994. Has anyone who’s read it asked, ‘Why isn’t this book set in the 21st century’? Why did you set in the mid-1990s?

The 90s were a simpler time for communication due to the lack of technology. I fell in love with and respected my characters to the point where I was afraid to ‘write’ them for fear I would fail them. Crazy, I know, but my way of making them great was to have them speak face to face rather than on Facebook Messenger. They deserved a love that was typically 20th century. I love writing scenes that don’t include a text message. I love writing intimate moments that don’t necessarily include nudity. People don’t speak to each other anymore. It’s ironic coming from me, but typing out words isn’t speaking. Using your ‘voice’ is the most daring thing of all, I think.

Many people have asked me why the book is set between 1990 and 1994, and I tell them the same thing: Even though I was a teenager in the 21st century, I liked it better back then. And the happier I am, the better I write.

I’m sure you can imagine their confused expressions at that one.

Did you have an initial inspiration for the book, or did it just ‘happen’?

I fell in love with writing when I was nine, and when I was 13 I said to myself, ‘I want to write a book for teenagers. I don’t know what it’s going to be about but I want to write something real. I want to write something that I would read a million times over.’

The next day, I saw an image in my head of Dwaine with his long hair and the day after, Paige looked at me with a sad face, and I just went from there.

Paige is 21 and Dwaine is 18, and they meet when Dwaine is still in high school. Despite the three-year age difference, in many ways, Dwaine is a lot more mature than Paige. Was this intentional? If so, why is it important to your story?

I deliberately made the characters and their personalities this way to avoid gender stereotypes and ageism. Dwaine is, in fact, more mature than Paige. He’s more emotional, he’s shy and he has a lighter presence. Paige, however, has a quicker mind, she’s more logical and she’s generally complicated. Typically, in the arts, the roles are reversed. I have a male friend who after he read the book said to me, ‘This dude is so many of us but he’s not what women want and it shows because Paige rages it at him.’ I replied, ‘Whether or not that’s true, you just said he’s so many of you and that’s all I wanted to write about.’ Something true, something people can relate to and something that both men and women can take away. That’s important to me. An artist can’t achieve much if they don’t understand people. People can’t be truly stimulated unless they feel understood.

When you began writing the book, you yourself were still at high school. What aspects of school life in the book are taken from your own high school experiences (if any)?

To be honest, so much of my high school experience isn’t reflected in the book for various reasons including the fact that I don’t remember a lot of my high school life (I mentioned my youth was a bit rocky). However, the only place I ever felt truly safe and understood was the library. If you read the book, that’ll make sense.

What do you believe is the main message of your story?

The entire foundation of Paige and Dwaine’s romance is based on the fear of the unknown. The way Paige sees herself in a negative way stems from her fear of not understanding why she suffers from a ‘curse’ of a disease. There’s a chapter I titled ‘Homophobia’, which represents the fear of something that people don’t understand. The 90s was a homophobic time. I don’t know if fear is the message I want to convey, but I certainly do want to show others that fear gets you nowhere at all, and sometimes it even gets you into trouble.

My English teacher in high school once said to me, ‘Once an author releases their work, it no longer belongs to them.’ I didn’t understand what she meant until she said, ‘People are going to dissect the shit out of your work and make it whatever they want it to be. You can tell them it’s not true, but why do that? People want to be entertained.’

I was angry. I knew people would think I had written a love story when I hadn’t. She said to me, ‘You want to be a novelist, right? That’s something you need to come to terms with.’ That’s what I did, so there isn’t a direct message. My readers will take care of that.

Ok, so here comes the question that all novelists either dread or smirk at! Is any part of your book autobiographical?

I wasn’t expecting this question but now I’m dreading answering it! I’m adamant that this book isn’t based on my life whatsoever, but I threw two pieces of me in there. The first was the music I loved and the second was my obsession with everything 90s. I also wanted to pay tribute to Nirvana and document Cobain’s death. Like Dwaine, they were my favourite band as a teenager.

So no, The Fetal Position isn’t autobiographical. Did I feel the way my characters feel when I was a teenager? Hell yes. 

Are you planning to write further novels?

Of course! I’ve mapped out a new manuscript. It’s also YA fiction, but it’s not a sequel to The Fetal Position. However, given the long and difficult 10 years I spent writing my first novel, I decided to put it aside and let it gain its strength while I wrote something a little less complicated, some poetry, which I’ve just finished.

The poetry is autobiographical, so those who found my vague comments on my adolescence interesting will have a chance to be nosy. And I welcome it! All updates will be through my social media. I can’t wait to share my next piece of work with you all.

How is your experience of writing your first novel affecting how you write your second?

I made a billion mistakes getting started and writing The Fetal Position, which I like to refer to as ‘writer growing pains’. I spent too many years striving for perfection when it didn’t exist. I spent too little time believing in my words and more time trying to comfort the characters in my head who I loved so much but who literally couldn’t love me back. When I started working with my writing coach and editor, she taught me so many things, from simple grammatical tips to massive ways to structure a novel. Editing a book is just as important as writing it, and with all this knowledge I know it won’t take 10 years to write the next one. I don’t recommend that to anybody. Time was my enemy for a long time, but it’s my friend now.

Featured Authors cover The Fetal Position
Featured Authors: M.B. Wynter, The Fetal Position

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Next time in featured authors, we’ll be interviewing a prolific Gold Coast-based author about his books.

Contact us to find out about being interviewed for featured authors.

Let’s Talk with the Authors

31 January 2020 by Leave a Comment

‘Let’s Talk with the Authors’ is a series of interviews with authors who have worked with editors4you or WriteDesign Publications. The promotional opportunity is also open to other authors (contact us for details).

Featured Author: Deborah Peden

Promoting Your Books

Just before Christmas 2019, I had the idea to suggest to my authors a simple way to promote their books by offering an author interview.

As we writers know, it’s one thing to write a book. It’s quite another to promote it. Writers often tend to shy away from promotion, but it’s vital to kick the shyness habit so that we can get our books out there in the big wide world.

Today, we kick off the Let’s Talk with the Authors Featured Author Interviews and chat with author Deborah Peden from Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, about her book 100 Ways to a Healthy 100.

photo of deb peden author for post let's talk with the authors
Let’s Talk with the Authors: Deb Peden, author of 100 Ways to a Healthy 100

Let’s Talk with the Authors: About Deb

Deb has a degree in English and History, and a BEd. She’s a Life Coach and Trained Demartini Method© Facilitator.

I think you can tell from her photo that Deb is a living example of health and wellbeing. In fact, for over a decade she’s been researching health and wellness, and supports others through workshops, seminars and face-to-face consultations.

Her book 100 Ways to a Healthy 100 is a combination of her passions: balanced wellness, educating and writing, and distilling ancient and contemporary wisdom into a readable and relatable format.

Let’s Get Cracking and Chat With Deb

Is 100 Ways to a Healthy 100 your first book?

Yes, this is my first published non-fiction book. I’ve written a number of creative pieces and have had magazine articles and short stories published over the years.

Where did your health journey start? Because you’re not exactly 100!

In 2008, I had a health crisis, triggered by years of sugar addiction. I read David Gillespie’s Sweet Poison around that time. His easy-to-read text with its science-made-simple approach helped me turn my health around, and the wake-up call ignited a desire to discover other ways to stay healthy and live a long life. I uncovered the secrets of the supercentenarians – those wonderful folk who’ve made it past 100 years, hale and hearty! In my book I share their wisdom to help my readers meet that milestone. I’m 62 years of age now, so I’ve got 38 years to reach full credibility!

(62, really?! You look at least 10 years younger!)

You told me you experienced some challenges while researching and writing this book. What kept you going?

Writer’s block inevitably reared its ugly head from time to time. Whenever I hit a wall with my research, I reminded myself of the chilling health statistics associated with lifestyle choices; choices that I had been making most of my life. For example, there are 422 million people worldwide (1 million of those Australians) living with type-2 diabetes. This figure doubled from 1980 to 2014! I knew I had an important message to get out there, and I persisted because I cared about my own health and the health of millions of others.

Then there were the fascinating facts I dug up that helped keep me going. For instance, the relationship between the health of the gut and the health of the brain/emotions – known as the gut-brain axis.

Does your book address the healthy mindset aspect?

100 Ways to a Healthy 100 addresses all seven areas of life: Mental, Vocational, Physical, Spiritual, Familial, Financial and Social. Community and connection, the social aspects of life, are proven to be one of the main reasons for those living healthy lives to 100 and beyond.

I understand the book was 4½ years in the writing. Did you expect to finish writing your book?
Yes and No! I had the title for my book very early on, although I considered it just a working title and thought a more condensed one would reveal itself as the book unfolded. What I didn’t expect was that I would modify my lengthy title by increasing the number! It swelled from 30 Ways … to 50 Ways … to 75 Ways … before finally becoming 100 Ways to a Healthy 100.

I had a message to share with others. I got over my self-doubts, sat down and did the work, trusted my own abilities. I ended up having a greater fear of keeping the ‘music’ locked up inside of me, than of sharing my message with the world.

What would you say is a key message for your readers?

We need to take control of our own health, not just buy into what food manufacturers say is ‘healthy’. I did my homework, trusted my gut and went back to the basics.

I follow the ancient wisdom of Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, who said, ‘Let food be thy medicine, and medicine thy food.’

If Hippocrates lived today, he’d qualify that by saying he means real food, not the processed stuff on supermarket shelves!

How would you condense your message for your readers?

I would summarise by offering four key points:

  • Eat as low down the food chain as possible
  • Move/exercise: it doesn’t need to be overly vigorous for longevity
  • Connect with others: community connection is said to be the most powerful strategy for long life
  • Find out what your purpose is in life and go for it. Serve others. Purpose is said to be more indicative of longevity than race, gender and educational levels.

Has there been a key influence in writing this book?

Aside from recognising my own poor health choices and health challenges, a major influence in writing my book was Dr John Demartini, a specialist in human behaviour who wrote the Foreword for my book. One of his key messages that continues to resonate with me is: ‘When the voice and the vision on the inside is more profound, and more clear and loud than all opinions on the outside, you’ve begun to master your life.’

You’ve incorporated humour and anecdotes in your book. Can you tell us about that? And about the illustrations?

I’ve taken a relatively serious topic – health – and injected a little humour. My creative writing in the past has always been about entertaining people, so it was natural to thread it through the pages.

My illustrator, Sean Leahy, is a well-known cartoonist: humour, irony and satire are part of his stock-in-trade. I gave Sean free rein to choose the topics for illustration. He modelled the two comical figures on the cover and throughout the pages on my husband and me. I love the way he was able to create humour in the otherwise-ordinary, and it helps to engage my readers.

Do you plan to write further books, on health topics or any other? If so, would you like to share?

I don’t have another book in mind at this stage, but I have been gathering important updates and new knowledge for an updated edition of 100 Ways to a Healthy 100. As balanced good health is my most important value, I’m constantly researching, looking out for and learning from others about ways to help us all live a long and healthy life.

front cover of book for let's talk with the authors
Get your health in shape. Click on Deb’s cover above to purchase her book

In the next ‘Let’s Talk with the Authors’ series, we’ll be chatting with a young Sydney author about her YA fiction novel.

Contact us to find out about being interviewed for your book.

The Editor Becomes a Published Author

27 November 2019 by 2 Comments

You might accuse me of indulging in shameless self-promotion in this blog, ‘The Editor Becomes a Published Author’, promoting my novel released just last week at the Queensland Writers Centre GenreCon2019 literary festival.

the editor becomes a published author photo
Launching Winter in Mallorca, Turmoil to Triumph, at GenreCon 2019

But I make no apologies. What?! Well, many authors struggle with self-promotion. Many of us are introverts and we suck at promoting our own work. My hope is that this post serves to help other authors take the leap into the great ocean of promotion.

What is the Difference Between a Writer and an Author?

It may seem like nitpicking to some, but it’s generally accepted that an author has published one or more written works, while a writer has not yet published any of their work.

How I Became an Author

I’ve been writing stories ever since I can remember. As a teenager, it was those awful self-indulgent journal entries full of angst and woe-is-me. I’ve kept most of what I’ve written throughout my life, but those journals hit the incinerator many years ago. Nevertheless, even they served a purpose, purging the frustrations and doubts of adolescent overload.

Over the years, a lot of my writings have been published, but much of it has been business writing under the auspices of corporations.

This year, finally, the editor becomes a published author with two of my own books, a nonfiction book on several aspects of the craft of writing, Ten Ways to Supercharge Your Writing (released March), and my historical fiction novel Winter in Mallorca, Turmoil to Triumph (released November).

How Does it Feel to be a Published Author?

As any of you who are already published authors know, it feels bloody wonderful! Similar maybe to the sense of accomplishment a climber experiences on reaching the summit of a challenging mountain – simply without the heavy breathing!

Why is that? Because writing and publishing is a mission.

There is much involved.

The Seed

First, you need that seed of an idea, the kernel of inspiration. Then that seed needs to germinate. If it’s a dud seed, it simply won’t. So it’s back to the drawing board.

The Writing

If it’s a productive seed, then the writing begins in earnest. Yet I won’t go into how the writing is done, because it can be so very different for each writer. And please don’t look to me as a role model: from seed to published book took me 24 years! Yes, you read right! I won’t go into the ‘why’ of such a long time frame, but I’m confessing it because again, perhaps it’ll serve to give a boost to other writers whose manuscripts have been languishing for years in the proverbial bottom drawer.

There is hope for you yet!

At the other end of the spectrum, I was recently working with a writer whose first 95,000-word novel took him around 13 months to write, including research overseas. He began writing the book in his spare time while running a business, then he sold his business and dedicated himself to writing, treating it like a job and working from 9 am to 4 pm each day. This is a short time to complete a novel of this length, especially with research involved, but in this case the writing was accomplished and the research thorough.

You might think 13 months sounds a long time. Well, in the writing world, it’s not.

Once the writing is done and you have a finished manuscript…well…what can I say? It’s not finished yet. You might even say it’s only just begun.

Revising

Now is the time for revising, revising, revising. In Stephen King’s words in his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft (2000), it’s time to ‘… kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings’. What does this mean? It means being utterly ruthless with your own writing, recognising that it isn’t perfect, that you need to cull and prune (there’s that gardening metaphor again), and that it may be time for external input.

Show and Tell

On that, it’s very confronting to show your writing to others. Believe me, I know.

I attended the writers’ retreat in Spain in June this year (2019) to finish my novel (and another nonfiction book), and one of the activities was group critiquing. (You can read about the retreat here.) Until then, not another living soul had ever read my manuscript, not even my family. Yes, I’m an editor and a writing coach and I know all the things I should do, but what can I say? Guilty as charged!

Getting feedback on my writing from other serious writers was a hugely valuable experience. I was able to make some fairly minor changes for big improvements.

Some writers engage beta readers (not your family, please) to give them feedback before they finish their manuscript.

All the above is before editing, by the way.

Enter the Dragon

Aka editor.

Once you’ve redrafted your manuscript multiple times and got it in the best possible shape, it’s time to give it to a qualified editor for professional editing.

After the edit, you’ll review your manuscript and then probably need a final edit and proofread. You’ll then be ready to move to the next step.

Yes, there’s still much to do.

Publishing

You may choose to self-publish, submit your manuscript to traditional publishers, or investigate subsidy publishing. (You can read about the choices here.)

You Have a Book! What Now?

You have your book, your baby, hot off the press, in your hand, ready to show the world.

How do you get it out there?

The Great Ocean of Promotion

Book promotion is a whole area on its own, and I have to admit to still being a novice at it. I expect I’ll be learning a lot, very quickly. Despite being a novice, I have some ideas to share with you. I’m working on making a download available on my website. Meantime, get in touch and I’ll be happy to send you some tips.

Thank you for indulging my shameless self-promotion. I hope the post ‘The Editor Becomes a Published Author’ has also given you some insight into the process of writing and publishing.

References

King, Stephen, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, 2012, Hodder & Stoughton, London.

Books by the Editor

If you love historical fiction, or you’re a musician with a penchant for Chopin, or you like a romance with a twist, or you’re looking for a gift for someone like this, ask me about Winter in Mallorca: Turmoil to Triumph. There’s a $20 special until 25 December when it reverts to $24.95 (postage applies beyond Gold Coast).

the editor becomes a published author. cover of Winter in Mallorca, Turmoil to Triumph

Want to improve your writing skills? Look no further than this entertaining, easy-to-read eBook Ten Ways to Supercharge Your Writing Skills: With bonus chapter on self-publishing. It’s just $11.95.

the editor becomes a published author. cover of ten ways to supercharge your writing skills

Help With Your Book from Go to Whoa (and anywhere in between)

Want help from go to whoa with your writing project? Never written a book before? Need to write a book to position yourself as an expert in your field? Check out WriteDesign Publications’ self-publishing packages.

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